Hollywood paranoia costs smaller distributors

he latest chapter in Hollywood's continuing struggle between art and commerce took place recently in a private conference room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan.

At the hotel meeting, held Wednesday, about six executives from several art-house film studios met to plot their response to a recent edict by the movie industry's trade association banning the sending of DVD's and videos to Academy Award voters.

The major studios pushed through the ban without consulting their smaller brethren â€” even those that were divisions of the studios' companies â€” saying they were acting to thwart pirating of movies.

The smaller studios see the move as a blow to their Oscar chances, having come to rely on the DVD's and videos to get their films seen by Academy Award voters who otherwise would not make it to the movie theaters.